1.1 Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to multimedia conferencing systems, and more particularly to multimedia-enabled communication and computing devices. Still more particularly, the present invention is a device for providing real-time multimedia conferencing capabilities to one or more companion computers or on a stand-alone basis.
1.2 Background
Early computers were large, clumsy, difficult-to-operate and unreliable room-sized systems shared within a single location. Similarly, early video and graphics teleconferencing systems suffered from the same drawbacks, and were also shared within a single location. With regard to computers, technological innovations enabled the advent of desktop “personal computers.” Relative to teleconferencing systems, new technologies were also introduced, such as those described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,617,539, entitled “Multimedia Collaboration System with Separate Data Network and A/V Network Controlled by Information Transmitting on the Data Network,” that brought high-quality, reliable video and graphics teleconferencing capabilities to a user's desktop. In both early desktop personal computers and conferencing systems, there were and remain many incompatible implementations.
Digital technology innovations targeted at working in conjunction with market forces gave rise to standardized desktop computer platforms, such as Microsoft/Intel machines and Apple machines, which have existing and strengthening unifying ties between them. The standardization of converging platforms unified fragmentations that existed within the computer hardware and software industries, such that immense economies of scale lowered the per-desktop development and manufacturing costs. This in turn greatly accelerated desktop computer usage and promoted the interworking between applications such as work processing, spreadsheet, and presentation tool applications that freely exchange data today. As a result, businesses employing such interworking applications became more efficient and productive. The push for greater efficiency has fueled the development of additional innovations, which further led to developments such as the explosion in electronic commerce as facilitated by the world-wide Internet.
Relative to present-day desktop conferencing, there are many networking approaches characterized by varying audio/video (A/V) quality and scalability. In recent years, customers have assumed a wide range of positions in their investments in such technologies. At one end of this range, various types of dedicated analog A/V overlay networks exist that deliver high-quality A/V signals at a low cost. At another end of this range are local area data network technologies such as switched Ethernet and ATM data hubs that function with high-performance desktop computers. These desktop computers and data networking technologies currently support only lower-quality A/V capabilities at a relatively high cost. Despite this drawback, these desktop computers and data networking technologies are believed to be the preferred path for eventually providing high-quality A/V capabilities at a low cost. Other A/V networking solutions, such as ISDN to the desktop, also lie in this range.
Within each of many separate networked A/V technology “islands,” various approaches toward providing multimedia applications such as teleconferencing, video mail, video broadcast, video conference recording, video-on-demand, video attachments to documents and/or web pages, and other applications can be performed only in fragmented ways with limited interworking capability. For many years, it has been projected that the desktop computer industry and the data networking industry will solve such fragmentation and interworking problems, and eventually create a unified, low-cost solution. Several generations of these technologies and products have consistently fallen short of satisfying this long-felt need. Furthermore, it is likely to be disadvantageous to continue to rely upon the aforementioned industries to satisfy such needs. For example, if the introduction of today's standardized multi-method fax technology had been held back by those who maintain that the idea that all electronic text should only be computer ASCII (as advocated, for example, by M.I.T. Media Lab Director Negroponte), a great amount of the fax-leveraged domestic and international commerce that has occurred since the early 1980's may not have occurred. Desktop multimedia technologies and products are currently in an analogous position, as it is commonly accepted that it will be only the desktop computer and data networking industries that at some point in the future will make high-quality networked A/V widely and uniformly available, and at the same time it is doubtful that this will occur any time soon.
What is sorely needed, given the pace and market strategies of the desktop computer and data networking industries, is an integration of separate technology and application islands into a single low-cost, manufacturable, reliable real-time multimedia collaboration apparatus capable of supporting a wide range of A/V networking technologies; A/V applications; and A/V and data networking configurations in a wide variety of practical environments. A need also exists for a design or architecture that makes such an apparatus readily adaptable to future technological evolution, such that the apparatus may accommodate evolving or new families of interrelated standards.